Post-Quantum: the UK startup that wants to save the world from quantum computers

Post-Quantum (or PQ) is the British cybersecurity startup that just won’t give up on its strange, unsettling vision of the future. Techworld recently caught up with it for the second or third time since it was founded in early 2009, still toiling away making software designed to cope with a world where quantum computers have smashed today’s encryption to smithereens.

This world doesn’t yet exist but that hasn’t stopped PQ quietly building a suite of secure communications software to cope with the serious consequences for the day it does. It can sound pretty far-fetched at first. Who wants to buy software for a world that is, in all probability, at least 10 or 20 Years hence? It turns out the company’s technology has useful applications today but CEO and explainer Andersen Cheng is very upfront about his experience with wary VCs whom he admits have often glazed over when they first hear the rarefied PQ technical pitch.